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Spin
by Robert Charles Wilson

Spin Cover

Review-a-Day   (What is Review-a-Day?)

"Wilson's writing is as tight as a drum here. The plot dashes along relentlessly never giving you time to think about necessities like food or sleep....Defying classification, Spin is a human drama, end of the world saga, and sci-fi spiritual all rolled into one." David Hannon, Powells.com (read the entire Powells.com review)

Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments:

One night in October when he was ten years old, Tyler Dupree stood in his back yard and watched the stars go out. They all flared into brilliance at once, then disappeared, replaced by a flat, empty black barrier. He and his best friends, Jason and Diane Lawton, had seen what became known as the Big Blackout. It would shape their lives.

The effect is worldwide. The sun is now a featureless disk — a heat source, rather than an astronomical object. The moon is gone, but tides remain. Not only have the world's artificial satellites fallen out of orbit, their recovered remains are pitted and aged, as though they'd been in space far longer than their known lifespans. As Tyler, Jason, and Diane grow up, a space probe reveals a bizarre truth: The barrier is artificial, generated by huge alien artifacts. Time is passing faster outside the barrier than inside — more than a hundred million years per year on Earth. At this rate, the death throes of the sun are only about forty years in our future.

Jason, now a promising young scientist, devotes his life to working against this slow-moving apocalypse. Diane throws herself into hedonism, marrying a sinister cult leader who's forged a new religion out of the fears of the masses.

Earth sends terraforming machines to Mars to let the onrush of time do its work, turning the planet green. Next they send humans…and immediately get back an emissary with thousands of years of stories to tell about the settling of Mars. Then Earth's probes reveal that an identical barrier has appeared around Mars. Jason, desperate, seeds near space with self-replicating machines that will scatter copies of themselves outward from the sun — and report back on what they find.

Life on Earth is about to get much, much stranger.

Review:

"One night the stars go out. From that breathtaking 'what if,' Wilson (Blind Lake, etc.) builds an astonishingly successful mélange of SF thriller, growing-up saga, tender love story, father-son conflict, ecological parable and apocalyptic fable in prose that sings the music of the spheres. The narrative time oscillates effortlessly between Tyler Dupree's early adolescence and his near-future young manhood haunted by the impending death of the sun and the earth. Tyler's best friends, twins Diane and Jason Lawton, take two divergent paths: Diane into a troubling religious cult of the end, Jason into impassioned scientific research to discover the nature of the galactic Hypotheticals whose 'Spin' suddenly sealed Earth in a 'cosmic baggie,' making one of its days equal to a hundred million years in the universe beyond. As convincing as Wilson's scientific hypothesizing is — biological, astrophysical, medical — he excels even more dramatically with the infinitely intricate, minutely nuanced relationships among Jason, Diane and Tyler, whose older self tries to save them both with medicines from Mars, terraformed through Jason's genius into an incubator for new humanity. This brilliant excursion into the deepest inner and farthest outer spaces offers doorways into new worlds — if only humankind strives and seeks and finds and will not yield compassion for our fellow beings. Agent, Shawna McCarthy." Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

Review:

"Wilson does so many fine things, it's hard to know where to begin to praise him." Washington Post

Review:

"I'm not a big science-fiction fan, but I'll read anything with a story and a low geek factor. Wilson is a hell of a storyteller, and the geek factor in his books is zero. Like Battletsar Galactica on TV, this is SF that doesn't know it's SF....There's plenty of imagination here, as well as character and heart." Stephen King

Review:

"[C]haracter-oriented, surpassingly strange....A far-fetched yet fascinating time-odyssey that pushes the envelope in every direction." Kirkus Reviews

Review:

"Of all SF writers currently active, Robert Charles Wilson may well be the best at balancing cosmic drama with human drama....[Spin is] the first major SF novel of 2005, another triumph for Robert Charles Wilson in a long string of triumphs." Locus

Review:

"[M]asterful...exhilarating....Spin is also a family drama that would not be out of place on mainstream shelves....[A] provocative, frequently dazzling read." SciFi.com

Review:

"Robert Charles Wilson is one of the best science-fiction writers alive, a fact borne out in his latest work....Spin is the best science-fiction novel so far this year." Rocky Mountain News

Review:

"Wilson's most ambitious and most successful novel to date. Wide-ranging and well-crafted." San Diego Union-Tribune

Review:

"Wilson is one of the best science-fiction writers alive." Spin

Synopsis:

In this spectacular novel of immense scope, an artificial, alien barrier is placed around the Earth, the moon and stars disappear, and scientists discover that time is passing faster outside the barrier than it is on the planet.
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About the Author

Robert Charles Wilson was born in California and lives in Toronto. His Darwinia won Canada's Aurora Award and was a finalist for the science fiction's Hugo Award; The Chronoliths was also a Hugo finalist and won the John W. Campbell Award; and his most recent novel, Blind Lake, was a Hugo finalist and a New York Times Notable Book. Earlier, his novel A Hidden Place won the Philip K. Dick Award.
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What Our Readers Are Saying

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Average customer rating based on 1 comment:
ginnie p, January 21, 2007 (view all comments by ginnie p)
Most reviews of Spin focus on the riviting plot - which is indeed astonishing. But few science fiction novels are so powerfully character driven. The three protagonists are solidly different. They grow. They change. They make poor decisions. They are real.
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Product Details

ISBN:
9780765348258
Author:
Wilson, Robert Charles
Publisher:
Tor Books
Subject:
Science Fiction - General
Subject:
Cults
Subject:
Human-alien encounters
Subject:
Science / General
Copyright:
2005
Series:
Tom Doherty Associates Book
Publication Date:
February 7, 2005
Binding:
Mass Market Paperbound
Language:
English
Pages:
454
Dimensions:
6.84x4.34x1.26 in. .48 lbs.
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